Dude, removing wall to wall carpeting (and all the layers under it) is no joke. We learned that when we finally tackled that task this weekend – and lived to tell the tale. Let me just tell you, progress smells a lot better than old carpeting. Even when there’s a substantial amount of sweat involved…
When we bought this house we knew that the four bedrooms upstairs (along with the hallway) needed new flooring since the once-cream (now mostly tan) wall to wall carpets were stained, threadbare, and even holey in some areas.
Thankfully a few areas were so loose we could peek under them during our very first walk-through to see what we were working with. Sadly, there was no hardwood to be found under there, and we were greeted with subfloor. But we’re so glad we made that discovery before buying (we definitely factored that expense into our decision). And after we got over the sadness of not having old hardwoods under there to revive, we got excited about picking out new flooring.
We considered a whole range of things for a while (hardwoods, new wall to wall carpeting, bamboo, tile) and after a lot of thought ended right back at oak hardwoods, since it’s what we had in our first house as well as our current one (even in the bedrooms). We like that we can always toss down an area rug to cozy things up (and since those can change over time it feels a little more flexible than committing to a certain type/color of wall to wall carpet for a decade or two). Plus with a kid and a dog we have just found wood flooring to be easy to keep clean/wipe down/etc.
We also already have oak flooring on the stairs that lead to the second level as well as in the future office, dining room, and living room – so we thought finding some in the same finish and grain would be a nice seamless this-has-always-been-here choice. But before we could bring in some delicious new hardwoods to install ourselves (at least that’s the plan!) we were faced with stripping away all of the aforementioned nasty carpeting in all four bedrooms up there and the hallway… which turned out to be quite the job. Here’s how we got ‘er done.
First we used a mini crowbar to pry back the corner…
With some gentle force it popped right up and we could start to pull it out from that corner.
It definitely wasn’t delicate pulling, more like forceful yanking, but with John working on one corner and me in another we were able to free up enough of it to start rolling it towards the other side of the room (we paused to take this photo, but picture me standing next to John rolling along with him). It’s definitely one of those four-hands-are-better-than-two tasks if possible.
Oh and wear gloves! And long sleeves if you’re smart. We wised up after our forearms got raw from carrying rolls of carpeting down to the garage, where we’re storing it all until we can figure out what to do with it (it’s too gross to donate, so we might need to rent a Bagster or something to get rid of it). Update: thanks for all the info on recycling carpets, cutting them down for curbside pickup, and all the other cheaper/greener alternatives than just trashing them. You guys are geniuses!
Room by room we repeated that process (and down the hallway as well). Pry up the corner, yank yank yank, roll roll roll, and drag that baby down to the garage. In some areas there was so much carpeting that we cut it in half with a box cutter before carrying it down to lighten our load. Then we were left with this lovely blue carpet padding underneath. Which was stapled and nailed down in about a thousand places per room (sadly that’s not an exaggeration).
Just like the carpeting, it could be yanked up, but it left a ton of little staples and nails and tack strips all around the room once it was stripped from the space. These are tack strips. They run around the perimeter of a room and are thin little shim-like pieces of wood with nails poking up through them (they grab the carpet pad and carpet to hold it in place).
Sometimes you can shove a crowbar under them (this takes borderline brute strength, so your palm is red even with gloves on afterwards) and pop them up all as one piece. The hard thing is that if they’re old and brittle (check) sometimes they splinter as they go, which means instead of slamming a prybar against them to try to get each 2′ long strip up in about 30 seconds, if it splinters a ton it can take five minutes to dig out all of the nails and splintered wood that break apart but are still stuck in the floor. You can see me gracefully (and breathlessly) doing this in the video we made for you about five photos down.
I worked on all of the tack strips in the master bedroom while John did the hallway and the nursery and then I tackled the guest room while John worked on Clara’s room. It probably took us about an hour and a half to get that part done, so one person trying to do that all by themselves might be in it for 3+ hours (probably with some blisters even with gloves on).
Once the tack strips were all up we were faced with the harder part…
… these guys.
They were everywhere and the prybar was of no help since it couldn’t really get under them. At first the only way we could get them up was by hand with a needle nosed pliers. One by one. But after John did Clara’s closet that way and it took over an hour (for one closet!!!) we decided we needed to find an alternative. Thankfully a little googling turned up the idea of a nice heavy duty long-handled floor scraper (we got ours for $25 at Lowe’s) and that was a lot faster! It still took some serious strength, and we both had sore backs, but we were able to get all of the staples up in all four bedrooms and the hallway in about two hours (at the by-hand-with-a-pliers-rate we thought it might take us about two days). Warning: if you have hardwoods, you might not want to use a scraper since it could ding them up, but it’s great for subflooring.
The next day we returned to clean up, using a broom to make piles followed by the shop-vac to suck up all the staples and nails.
You can see in this video how each step of the process went (it shows how to get up those tack strips and staples a little better than still photos can):
Now we have smooth, bare subfloors that are ready for hardwood.
We never thought we’d be so glad to see pure unadulterated pressed wood in our lives!
And now our garage looks like this:
That, my friends, is what progress looks like. Turns out progress looks a lot like stinky rolled up carpeting.
But oh happy day, we’re moving in the right direction!
Any other carpet stripping going on? Are the staples your arch nemeses? Those little buggers were infuriating until we discovered The Amazing Wonder-Scraper! Seriously, my “what superhero power would you have?” answer would now be to have a paint roller on one arm and a floor scraper on another. Never know when you’ll need one…
More Flooring Projects
If you would like to read about other flooring projects we’ve done, please check out the posts below:
Rebecca says
Did you guys check and make sure that the second floor is able to handle the weight of hardwoods. I think houses have to be built with enough strength to support the weight of hardwoods on the second floor. I know my in-laws were going to have hardwoods installed on their second floor and weren’t able to do it….
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, we’re looking into all that (structurally we have the ok that it’s sound for hardwoods, we’re just checking if the subflooring is ok as the base (or if we need to add plywood or adjust how we install). Will keep you posted!
xo
s
Tanja says
I am giddy with excitement when I think about all the new projects at this house. Amazing job with ripping up the carpet. Can’t wait to see the installation of the new hardwood.
April says
This fall, we bought a 100 year-old, 3,000 sq. ft. house to renovate in the city of Detroit. My hands still hurt from pulling up staples, but the hardwood is worth it! It was oddly enjoyable to experiment and find the right tool combination. I can’t wait for your post about the flooring you’re buying- I need to order flooring this week for the two spots we pulled up carpet only to find sub-floor. Our “future” nursery quickly turned into a place our first baby needs to live in July!
Lorilyn says
Wow that’s a lot of work! We only had to do one, one I say, stair runner and I was like, THIS IS TERRIBLE.
For the hardwoods – you guys can totally install yourselves! We did our kitchen/dining room/family room area ourselves (about 500 square feet) and it turned out fantastic. It’s a little back breaking (all the bending to fit the hardwoods into place) but totally do-able. We found that when we had three people working together – 2 people alternating cutting pieces and fitting them into place, then one person coming through and nailing, things went much faster than just with two people.
It’ll look great and you’re going to save soooo much moolah doing it yourselves. Our 500 square feet ended up costing us only $2000.
whitney says
Have you guys checked out Freecycle.org?
A great way to recycle your carpet!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, we love that site!
xo
s
kristen says
I can’t wait to see what kind of hardwood you put in. After a mishap with a leaky swiffer wetjet my fiance and I are now tasked with replacing our kitchen flooring (which I am excited about because I hated the flooring that was already in there).
Love hearing about the progress J&S. Keep it up!
cd says
You probably are already aware of this: but watch Burger with the old carpet nails and rusty metal stuff. Dogs can get tetanus too. My dog did probably from a construction nail from our neighbors house. It was pretty scary. (They get what is called a “Tragic mask” face – or something like that – like they are looking at a train wreck. Seriously, bizarre). It baffled our vet until another vet in the office who happened to have previously worked in agriculture walked by and said “whoa,” because apparently it’s also common where puppies can eat cow poop down on the farm.
This sounds like I’m making it up. But watch your pooch’s paws!
YoungHouseLove says
So scary! He hasn’t been around the new house at all during this process just to keep him safe!
xo
s
Ana Silva says
I’ve been there and I know exactly what it feels like. Except, I have hardwoods that I was trying to keep and refinish and I had to pull all the hundereds of staples one by one…why so many?? I hated that part, especially it it broke off and didnt come off whole. I had some old rusty stuff on there. I dont ever want to go back to wall to wall carpeting. I think its unsanitary. Rugs all day!
Ana Silva says
Oh I forgot to mentioned I used http://www.swordfloors.com/ to refinish my floors and they were amazing. Eco friednly options and really clean! Also quite afordable. Anyways, just trying to help out. Not even sure you can use them.
YoungHouseLove says
Sounds great!
xo
s
erin says
holy wow!!! that’s a LOT of work! i know my parents plan on replacing the carpet upstairs. I’m wondering if having us remove the carpet ourselves will save some bucks?
anne says
We used one of those floor scrapers to pop up tile in our bathroom… Only problem is that we thought it came with a replacement blade and just started using the scraper out of the package. It kinda did the work, but didn’t seem like a shining tool from the gods that we thought it would be. After hours and HOURS of slamming it into the tiles, we realized that it wasn’t a replacement blade, it was the blade… and it was a lot more useful going forward with the blade installed.
Scraper, sans blade, with demolished tiles:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerkstorewilly/3912893309/in/set-72157622161239776/
YoungHouseLove says
OH NO!
xo
s
Valentina says
I don’t have any plans for ripping up any carpeting in the foreseeable future, but that didn’t prevent me from reading about every practical detail of the process and being crazy-interested! You, guys, are so upbeat about all your projects, that any topic turns into a good read if you are the ones covering it! Btw, where was Clara while you were working on this?
YoungHouseLove says
She was with Grammy and TomTom! They’re the best about taking her to the park or out for ice cream while we make a mess! Haha.
xo
s
Shalena says
Congrats on your new house! I love to see old carpet get ripped out…even though it’s an icky process. We just did it about a year ago in our new house, and laid our own hardwood floors. Word of advice: check the warranty info on your new hardwoods carefully (when you get to that point). We found out after the fact that we voided our warranty by installing our hardwood floors on the particle board subfloor. Our warranty required plywood subfloor. Oops! :-/
YoungHouseLove says
Great tip Shalena!
xo
s
Jennifer says
Oh man…. I have been there before! About 10 years ago, I helped my mom renovate her childhood home – a 1951 ranch-style home. There was bright orange and blue shag carpet with hardwood floors underneath. Ugh. It’s a stinky, tedious job (read: I was on the floor with pliers), but so worth it. Congratulations on tackling it!
John @ Our Home from Scratch says
Nice work. I always wear a mask too when I’m ripping out old carpet. In college, I got majorly congested after ripping out some carpet in my fratenity. Lord knows how old it was though.
Jess says
Whenever we would pull up old carpeting in my childhood home, I was the designated staple-remover!! I actually really enjoy that job :) (Maybe ’cause it made me feel special to get to do something nobody else was?)
We always used a combination of slotted screwdriver – to pry up the staple – with pliers – to finish pulling it out. And I kept a little plastic container with me to put everything in as I went (staples + leftover weird bits of padding).
I had no idea there was such a thing as a floor scraper!!
Lauren says
We had to do the same thing in our house…the staples felt like they took forever, and the worst part was we had pink and black linoleum tile UNDER the carpet on top of our hard wood. So we had to scrape off tile and then pick out the staples cuz we couldnt scrape the wood.
You should burn the carpet tack strips…fire pit or fireplace, and then you just have a pile of nails. Makes great kindling.
Marissa smith says
I love this post!! We have 28 year old carpet in our house and it’s beyond gross! I have been trying to convince my husband that it need to go but he says ” it’s fine” ugh! I have been shopping around for hardwood. I found a real nice prefinished hickory hardwood at Home Depot for $2.99 a sq foot. Now I just have to get the hubster on board!!! Looking forward to reading about what you guys choose for your new house! I love your blog!
YoungHouseLove says
Aw thanks Marissa! That flooring sounds great!
xo
s
Brynn says
wow wish we had known about the scraper when we pulled up our carpets on floors and stairs. Oh the stairs were the worst!! We pulled out the staples with pliers. one by one. our hands were raw!
Jen@The Decor Scene says
Oh yes I feel your pain. We had carpet glued to our concrete floor on our first level. It had pee stains and smelled really bad. We also had some peel & stick tiles that they glued to the floor also. It took us a few weekends to get it all up and we used the same kind of scrapers that you guys used. Hard on the back, but in the end it all came up. You can check it out here. http://www.thedecorscene.blogspot.com/search/label/Family%20Room
Blake says
Been there, done that :) Last spring I removed all the carpet in our house, refinished our oak stairs and installed hardwood. It’s amazing how much better rooms look even with just the subfloor! Also amazing (and by amazing, I mean gross) how much dirt and sand live under the carpet and carpet pads. Very gratifying to get rid of it once and for all. Can’t wait to read about the flooring install!
Gabbi @ Retro Ranch Reno says
Ohhhhh staples are the worst! I can’t even imagine if you had to do each one by one…because just removing them from chairs when I reupholstered things was enough to drive me batty and kill my hands!!
Steph says
Ugh this is my day, today. My boyfriend and I moved into a ranch maybe 3 weeks ago, and ripped up carpet in almost the whole house before we moved in. We painted, finished the flooring, and moved in, but we still have the spare room. We have literally shut the door and ignored it since we moved in! We’re tackling the carpet in there today though.
Isn’t the difference in the smell of the house after the carpet is gone awesome? Our whole house smells fine, but once you open the spare room door it has that old people smell, so gross! So happy to get rid of it today.
Megan @ Monroe Makeshift says
It’s amazing how much brighter, cleaner, and larger everything looks without the carpet! Can’t wait to see the new flooring!
Elizabeth says
Congrats on getting all that carpet up! We just did this in our new house as well, and everything went very similar to your experience except that in one bedroom we found that the underpad had been GLUED to the hardwood floors underneath. It took four adults, four scrapers and half a can of paint thinner (and 4 masks!) to get all the adhesive up. We’ll still have to refinish the floor but at least there’s no more shag green carpeting!
ebichan says
Holler!
My fiance and I spent hours hunched over, yanking millions of staples and brads out of antique pine flooring that had been brutally and hideously carpeted over. Your scraper would have been AWESOME but the ancient soft pine probably wouldn’t have held up too well.
We used a combination of pliers (worst ever), flat-head screwdrivers, putty knives, and those handy 5-in-1 painter’s multitools (they have a little hook on one side that works great for wiggling staples out of wood).
Those tack strips are hazardous, aren’t they?! The ones in our house, perhaps cruelly, had “E-Z TACKLESS STRIP” printed all over them. I cursed the so-called “tackless” things every time one of them stabbed me.
YoungHouseLove says
Totally!
xo
s
LeAnna says
Did I pick up a subtle shout out to Teddy Ruxpin in the sentence “four hands are better than two?” Because now all I can hear in my mind is that song!!!! I even read through ALL the comments to see if I was the only weirdo who thought that same thing….and apparently I am!!! I LOVED Teddy Ruxpin as a kid! In case you aren’t familiar w/ a) teddy Ruxpin or b) this song, here it is: http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=2bp9IhJDzBQ&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2bp9IhJDzBQ
Now it’s stuck in your head too, huh??? ;-)
It’s fun to see the work on the new house, my hubby and I have dreams of upgrading from our small rancher into our “dream area” too, so a big congrats to you guys that this all worked out so seemlessly!!
YoungHouseLove says
Haha! Gotta love Teddy Ruxpin!
xo
s
MicheleLouise says
Oh I feel your pain! We pulled up carpet from the living room, office, dining room, entryway and stairs in our house when we bought it 4 years ago. Ours had oak floors underneath so we pulled the staples out ONE AT A TIME! With pliers and a small flat head screwdriver to get space under some of them for the pliers!! That was no fun at all!
Mehgan says
Oooh I feel your pain! We tore up all the carpeting in our house (2000+ sq ft) August 2011 through March’ish of 2012 to replace it with a really nice and thick laminate flooring. We did one room at a time over those 6+ months and removing the carpeting was the most hated part for me too. Especially in the places where the installers had ripped a chunk out of the padding then just stapled it back in place with like 30+ staples.
The scraper is brilliant, I pulled all our staples up with pliers, I found it easier to pull one end of the staple up then the other side came out when I gripped it and twisted. House is looking great so far, if you’re planning on painting trimwork (and even ceiling) I wanted to suggest it’s way easier to do it now when you don’t have to worry about dripping on the floor than having to put down covering later. But I understand about timing, just wanted to throw it out there. Love your house by the way :)
Angela says
I just wanted to say I think you definitely made the right decision with wood flooring. We just moved from almost all wood to almost all carpet. While the carpet is in decent shape, I hate it and can’t wait to get rid of it!
We also removed carpet in our old house but we found wood so I had to use the gentle staple removal method… while 8 months pregnant. Very tedious!
Tiffany F. says
Looks better already!!!! Are you planning on painting before laying down your new flooring? Congrats on the new house!! I love reading your blog because you always have something going on!!! No stale reading here!
YoungHouseLove says
We’re hoping to at least spray the trim!
xo
s
Maureen says
Hi guys! This is the second time i have seen you mention that you want to “spray” the trim… will you be going the Katie Bower route and breaking out the big ol’ paint sprayer?
YoungHouseLove says
Yes! We can’t wait to give it a try!
xo
s
Melanie says
We just bought a house and had to remove the carpet that was in there for 25 years!! There’s hardwood underneath but they’re a mess! To take out the tack strips, we actually used a snow shovel – just shoved it underneath and pushed down. Much faster! As for the staples, we just used a flathead screwdriver and pliers – we still aren’t done with all of those!
Jen says
When we’d lived in our home for almost two years, back before we started blogging about our home improvement adventures (which is a shame because it would have made a great entry!), I told my husband that I wanted to rip up the living room and hallway carpet. He said we could do that although neither of us had ever pulled up carpet before we didn’t figure it would be hard. I mean, those folks at HGTV make it look so easy! Three days went by and he didn’t mention when we were going to do it, so one night when he was at work, I ripped up the carpet myself. The pad was so old that it fell apart as I picked it and there was a ton of sand under it. Something else I didn’t think of was that we have a concrete slab so I had to pop the tack strips out of that. I was so proud of my hard work but I had a very unhappy husband when he got home. Apparently walking around on bare concrete is not something he enjoys. HA HA! Any time anyone mentions ripping up flooring he just gives me the stink eye and tells them, “Oh, call Jen. She’s good at it.” On the other hand though, when we had the toilet saga in 2011 (http://jenssweetmagnolias.blogspot.com/2011/11/great-flood-of-2011.html) and we had to remove the carpet in our room, I was able to knock it out by myself in no time flat.
Craig says
Well done to both of you! I recently had the joy of removing carpet from my finished basement which included glued down padding on the concrete slab. I stored the piles of carpet and padding in my gaarge as well and would practically growl each time I saw it after what it took to remove, get past the stairs, wall corners and off of the floor.
Christine says
It’s looking better already! We tackled a similar project about 3 years ago. Our painter actually suggested painting after the wood floors went down – the baseboard and door trim comes up/gets cut anyhow in the laying of the floors, and just in case there’s a wall nick or scuff during floor installation it’ll be a cleaner look to paint after than touching up. We also pulled up about 2500 sq feet of carpet, tacks, and (by hand) staples. We hired out the wood floor installation, and when they came they started out by doing a massive sanding job on the subfloor to make sure all the seams were even. That’s when they told us we could have left all the staples…the sander would have knocked them out (grrr…).
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man!
xo
s
Mary | lemongroveblog says
Wow!! That looks like a ton of work, but I bet it’s super exciting to have that blank slate to work with! Can’t wait to see where you guys head with it :)
Kara says
Oh wow. What a job. What and awful, exhausting messy job. But I am suddenly deliriously excited to see this house get whipped into shape.
Are you gonna paint your trim before you put the floor down?
YoungHouseLove says
We’d love to!
xo
s
Christine says
Would you do a post sometime about how you keep your hardwoods clean? We just moved into a house with wall to wall hardwood, and I have three small kids. It constantly looks like a fishy cracker graveyard around here. It’s repulsive, and I really miss the ease of vacuuming. Any tips?
YoungHouseLove says
We just wipe them down with a damp mop with Mrs Meyers on it and then rinse them with a damp mop just with water. Don’t get them too wet and you’re golden :)
xo
s
Kara says
Butting in! Get a stick vac. I have a Hoover Flair. Super fast pick up for debris. We have LOTS of goldfish around here, too.
Tonya says
We’ve been there so I feel ya on the sweaty, back-breaking, skin-rawing process! We were lucky and found, albeit not perfect, hardwood underneath. Which also meant removing staples one at a time. I sprained my finger. It sucked. Best of luck with your new home and installing the new floors!
Amy L. says
I am tired and sore after just reading this post! That looks like a lot of work, but will certainly be worth it!
Misty says
Hello Petersiks! My husband and I did this same project last summer…Tip for you, take some time to walk around and screw down any spots that creek or groan when you walk on them. Its a bit of extra work, but its so worth it to not have creeky spots. I missed one on my side of the bed and it bugs me every morning. Grrrr! Thanks for sharing! Love you guys!
YoungHouseLove says
Great tip!
xo
s
Megan B says
I read through several comments to see if someone already mentioned this and I didn’t see it (I apologize if I’m repeating), but we just ripped up all of the carpet in our downstairs. I just couldn’t handle adding it to the landfill, so I started looking online and our local Habitat for Humanity store accepts used carpet. It does have to be in decent shape, so I don’t know if your carpet would meet the criteria, but I bet they can steer you towards a recycling location if you’re interested.
I was amazed by how dusty our house was after pulling up the carpet! We built our house 8 years ago, so the carpet wasn’t even that old. I’m not sure I’ll ever install carpeting again. It kind of gave me the creeps, and I’m not usually one to get creeped out easily.
My husband is installing our hardwood floor as I type this, and I’m so excited! I like to walk around and find my favorite board. My son thinks I’m nuts. Can’t wait to see how your floors turn out!
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks for the tip Megan!
xo
s
Jennifer says
Those tack strips hurt. When we ripped up our wall to wall carpet, I accidently sat on one. It got stuck in my butt and I ended up having to get a tetanus shot. I was done with helping after that.
YoungHouseLove says
Ouch!
xo
s
Laurel m. says
So, did the floor scraper get the staples out, or cut them off flush with the floor? I am about to rip out a massive blue grody carpet from my dining room. I have five little children and I can no longer deal with spills, so having not a penny to my name, I’ll be painting my subfloor. I’m just wondering if I’m better off trying to pull out every staple by hand?
YoungHouseLove says
It popped them out with some force (you can see it better in the video). Hope it helps!
xo
s
Susan M. says
We just moved into our house a few months ago and pulled up a bunch of gross, old, bright blue carpet. We were lucky enough to have oak hardwoods underneath, but pulling up all those little staples and nails by hand was a pain! Totally worth it though. I love seeing the progress on your new place!
Kari says
So, Katie Bower is doing a hardwood flooring giveaway on her blog this week… Maybe you should enter ;)
YoungHouseLove says
Haha!
xo
s
Sara H says
Love the pics and that you will be doing hardwoods!! But I have a question – since you have particleboard subfloor how are you installing the floors? My understanding is that you don’t want to nail solid hardwoods into particle board but rather would need plywood subfloor. Thanks in advance for the answer! :)
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, we’re actually looking into that now! We’re not 100% sure it’s particle board, so we’re bringing a piece to the flooring pros to hear what they think we need to do :)
xo
s
Ben says
I’m sure this isn’t common, but when I pulled up the carpet in my future dining room, I figured out that the particle board subfloor was actually on top of the original pine wood floors. Apparently they wanted to raise the level to match the next room, which I figured out had somewhat newer hardwood flooring on top of the original wood flooring.
So while I didn’t go through your pain of pulling up thousands of staples, I did have to go through the pain of pulling up old and rotted subflooring.
YoungHouseLove says
Woah that’s crazy!
xo
s
Laura says
Wow! What a project – but way to go with the progress!! When we renovated our kitchen we found hardwood floors under two layers of linoleum (yay!), but since it was wood, my husband had to pull out the hundreds of staples one-by-one with pliers (boo.)
Elizabeth says
Great post on removing carpeting. We had the exact same experience when we moved into our house 3 year ago. We found that after removing everything down to the subfloor, we then had to level some areas. It helps when you put down the new floor so that the boards lay flat. Also consider soundproofing the floor in some way. We wish we had done that. After installing hard woods in our entire second floor (and having a baby) that you could hear EVERYTHING going on in the kitchen from upstairs. Just some things to think about. I am so looking forward to reading about all you will do at your new place. Best wishes!
Hillary says
Ugh, we’re thinking of doing the same thing to our house and, since I’m a teacher, I’ve got the summer staring me down in just a few short days. We’d been considering cork, but I know I’d really rather have hardwoods…I feel like I might get picky and want to change the stain one day! :)